Novaya Gazeta journalist and lawyer beaten in Chechnya

In Grozny, the capital of Chechen Republic (a federal subject of Russia), Elena Milashina, an investigative reporter from the Russian Novaya Gazeta, and well-known lawyer Marina Dubrovin, were attacked.

Novaya Gazeta, states that an aggressive mob composed of mostly women attacked them in the lobby of the Continent Hotel late on the night February 6. The journalist and the lawyer were kicked while the attackers filmed everything on camera. 

•Frightened parents renounce their children while Chechen authorities persecute human rights advocates, LGBTI individuals and teenagers

•Extrajudicial executions in Chechnya

•Chechen gays continue to be persecuted throughout Russia

Elena Milashina claims that she has repeatedly received threats from the Chechen authorities, and even personally from President Ramzan Kadyrov.

Milashin and Dubrovin arrived in Grozny for the trial of Islam Nukhanov, who was detained after he videotaped the mansions of some members of Kadyrov’s inner circle and posted them on the internet. 

The journalist and lawyer filed allegations that they had been attacked by the police in Chechnya. The Chechen authorities have yet to respond.

Elena Milashina has written many investigative pieces on human rights violations in Chechnya. This includes the abduction and murder of 27 people, who were strangled or shot “in a basement under Kadyrov’s name.” She wrote another on the persecution of gays in the republic. Her piece on the marriage of 57-year-old head of the district police department, Najud Guchigov, to a Chechen minor, Louise Goylabieva, resonated with many—according to journalists, the official forced the girl and her family to let her marry him. But efforts and interference of human rights activists could not save them, as Guchigov was publicly supported by Ramzan Kadyrov.